Ron's Arrival
Ron didn't so much appear as snap into existence — one instant nothing, the next a shadow above the ruins.
Below him stretched a dead world: skeletal buildings gnawed down to their frames, black smoke snaking upward like dying serpents. The blast had been so vicious it didn't just consume its prey — it clawed into neighboring territories, erasing cult strongholds and mercenary outposts alike.
The air tasted of scorched metal and charred bone.
From above, he searched for Bruce — rooftops, alleys, even the shadows that seemed to cling too long to their shapes. Nothing. Then, a faint buzz in his ear.
"Ron… I see you. Get in my car."
Ron dropped to street level. The vehicle waiting for him seemed out of place — polished, gleaming, untouched by the apocalypse. The door hissed open, spilling faint ozone and the sterile glow of holographic controls. Every surface was seamless, inhumanly perfect.
Bruce didn't waste time — the car shot forward, silent but heavy with purpose. They weren't far before the city itself turned on them.
From the ruins, figures crawled out — cultists, mercenaries, and… others. Skin too pale, eyes glistening with an unnatural sheen. Their attacks came in chaos: fire that burned black, lightning that forked sideways, water that hissed like acid.
The car's nano-shield blossomed into a web of blue light, each impact shuddering through the air like muffled thunder. Hidden weapons whispered open, spitting precise streaks of fire into the dark. The explosions didn't slow the tide.
Ron exhaled.
"Bruce… hold this for a moment."
He vanished.
When he reappeared above them, the Blade of Vengeance was already burning silver-white in his hand. The air screamed as he moved. In a blink, the battlefield emptied — bodies hanging for a fraction of a heartbeat before gravity remembered them. They dropped like discarded puppets.
Only one man remained. Ron held him aloft by the throat, eyes glowing the slow red of banked embers.
From the car below, Bruce's grip on the wheel tightened. His voice was quiet.
"This… isn't the Ron I know."
The man's windpipe gave way with a wet crunch.
"Ron… you've changed," Bruce whispered.
The ground rippled. The air itself seemed to bow under some invisible weight.
[Many Beyonders are watching you]
[You have interfered with their plans]
Ron's gaze rose to the sky — and saw that it was not a sky. The blue was only a thin surface, and beneath it, shapes moved. Slow. Vast. Wrong. It was as though the heavens were an ocean, and something beneath the waves was rising to look back.
The skyline swayed, warped. For a moment, Ron felt as small as a breath.
Bruce's voice broke through, panicked.
"Why is everything shaking? Ron… what's up there?"
The pressure tightened until Ron's skull felt ready to split — then, abruptly, it was gone.
[Your Supporter "???" has driven the Beyonders away]
His chest felt cold. My… supporter? The thought scratched at the back of his mind, but Bruce's stare pulled him back. Ron reappeared in the car, his smile thin.
"Hey, I'm back."
Bruce didn't return it.
World of Dark Souls
In the bleak realm of the World of Dark Souls, even silence had weight. The ground was a cracked obsidian plain, slick with faint streams of glowing red liquid that hissed when touched. Every step threatened to awaken something sleeping beneath.
Dr. Thomas stood before Skelly, the air between them rippling with unstable magic.
"Gather the forces," Thomas said, his voice cutting through the gloom. "We hunt the Watcher."
Memory surged — the Outer N93 breaching the Watcher's dimension, its arrival tearing the sky in half. Even in this higher realm, the Outer's fragmented form loomed so vast it dwarfed the Watcher's entire kingdom. Each of its movements twisted gravity and warped time, crushing palaces into dust without touching them.
Before the Watcher could command a defense, he collapsed — his essence pulled into a strange stone gripped in Thomas's hand. The stone cracked with a thunderclap, bursting into seven shards that fled like hunted prey into a lower universe.
Thomas bound the Watcher's wife in chains of Black Sorcery, each link screaming with trapped souls, and sent her chasing one shard. He loosed colossal dragons — each the size of a continent — to reduce the kingdom to molten ruin while the Outer prowled through the chaos as a living catastrophe.
Then Thomas descended to the lower universe, carrying Thomas 2, and vanished for eons.
In the ages that followed, new horrors emerged — some too dangerous to name — each sent to hunt what remained of the Watcher's will. Skelly was one of them, his bones marked by the scars of battles fought in timelines that no longer existed. His survival now was owed to Ron and Locki's desperate actions in the future… actions that had already begun to echo backward.
The sky above rumbled — not from storms, but from something vast moving in the dark between worlds.
Hero Town
The iron door loomed like a slab cut from a nightmare. Ron knocked. The sound went nowhere — no echo, just swallowed silence.
He knocked again.
Silence.
With a soft click of his tongue, he forced the door open. The space beyond was impossibly small — a cramped room that smelled faintly of rust and wet stone. Somewhere beneath, a rhythmic thunk… thunk… thunk pulsed like a heartbeat.
A narrow staircase led down, each step darker than the last.
At the bottom, pale light revealed two figures hunched over wooden tables. The smell hit first — thick, cloying, metallic. Then he saw what they were working on.
Blades flashed. Wet impacts. Hands dragging heads — freshly severed — into neat rows like trophies.
The heads' eyes were open.
Some blinked.